Back on the island, Rey and Nia began their repair work on Ten. Shortly the repair work was completed. Ten was testing himself by hovering around the lab and when Nia went away for a while he asked Rey.
“Did you two finally have sex together?
“What kind of a question is that of a brother?”
“So I take that as a yes?”
“Ten, do you feel pleasure?”
“Well yes but not the sexual kind. However I’ve been thinking about making myself a female Machine Being and outfitting us both with the proper equipment.”
“Really, I can’t imagine what that would look like.”
“Here, I’ll show you, look at this screen.”
Ten draws a pair of cartoonish looking robots. They were naked and had outrageous looking sex organs, one was that of a male the other a female. They both cracked up laughing.
Nia walks in. “I see his sense of humor is coming back. What are you two laughing about? He was quite depressed at times, stuck on the island not being able to move around and with no contact with the outside.”
“Nia did a wonderful job cheering me up. We kept busy working on the fourth level project.”
“Fourth level again! How about explaining to me about the three levels you mentioned before, that our minds are supposed to have?”
“I’ll be glad to explain it to you, it will take some time, but first I’d like to go outside. It’s been a long time since I breathed fresh air, seen the sun and heard the surf.”
Nia interjects. “He’s kidding about the fresh air. Why don’t we break for lunch, we’ll have it on the beach.”
On the beach, Ten begins. “Let’s see, where shall we start, well this is going to take quite a while so Nia if he falls asleep, poke him in the ribs. To make it easier for you to follow I will use the human mind as an example.”
“Neos T’lag wanted to build a machine being that operated on the same principle as the human mind. In order to create such a machine one must know how the human mind operates. An important step in understanding how the human mind operates is to know the cognitive stages on which man’s mind is built.
Man is a rational animal. This definition describes the essential characteristic of man that distinguishes him from other animals. Being a rational animal means having the ability to reason. The feature of the faculty of reason is a volitional consciousness operating on the conceptual level of cognition. The product of reason is thinking. Thinking is an active mental process that focuses the mind on its conceptual content.
Man is not born with the ability to reason. He acquires it later in his life. The development of man’s reasoning ability is initiated by an automatic mechanism. This is a neurological process that is unique to man. It occurs in that physical area of the human brain that has a built-in property for differentiating perceptual data and integrating it into concepts.
Man begins life with his mind operating on an automatic, SENSORY LEVEL. His next higher level, the PERCEPTUAL LEVEL, develops soon after he is born. At this stage the operation of his mind is similar to that of other mammals. At about the age of 12 months man’s brain begins the transition towards a CONCEPTUAL LEVEL of cognition.
This transition is initially automatic. From this point his mental development progresses through a series of stages. As the conceptual content increases his mind becomes less automatic and more volitional. It is the continuous increase of the conceptual content that further advances man’s consciousness toward higher stages. And it is each progressively higher stage that increases the conceptual content. It is not until his early teens that man develops his full powers of reasoning.
Of all living things man has the most capability in dealing with his surroundings. All living organisms have specific physical characteristics built into them by nature, making them unique entities. They differ from each other to various degrees in their method of cognition, metabolism, reproduction, locomotion, etc. All living organisms have as their primary goal the maintenance of their life. All their lesser goals and actions are directed towards the fulfillment of their primary goal. The kinds of actions the organism must perform in order to achieve its primary goal depends on its nature, its physical characteristics. No organism has a choice in this matter. It has to behave according to its built-in function, according to its nature.
All animals except man have a pre-programmed code for survival. It is an automatically built-in, biologically preset, code. Under normal circumstances the actions this built-in code generates guarantee the animal’s survival.
Man’s built-in functions, his nature, his physical characteristics are such that nature does not provide him with an automatic code for survival. Man’s consciousness is volitional. Volition is action generated by an organism that is not derived from a pre-programmed code for survival. Man confronted with a choice, may not choose the correct action. In order to maintain his life man has to decide by his own free will to think, to learn what the correct choices are.
Rey interrupts. “I think I follow you so far but you’re not giving details. Like what is your definition of consciousness, what is free will and do we really have it?”
“I’ll get to all that later, but first we need to begin by understanding the development of the nervous system.”
Ten draws a diagram in the sand and labels it “The Evolution of the Nervous System”.
This time Nia interrupts. “This sound like a long lecture, we’re finished with lunch so can we pick this up another time?”
Ten says. “You’re right Nia; we should get back and start repairing the facilities.”
End of Chapter 3…River Road
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